NOVEMBER 7, 1997 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

BOOKS

A 20-year journey of self-realization in friendship

The Farewell Symphony

by Edmund White

Alfred A. Knopf, $25 hardcover

Reviewed by Nels P. Highberg

Towards the end The Farewell Symphony, Edmund White mentions Michel Foucault, the French philosopher known in American circles primarily for his writings on sex, bodies, and power.

Unlike many writers, however, White does not refer to Foucault in order to start some intellectual discussion. Instead, he sees Foucault more as a friend, someone he had met in America and gotten to know a bit better while traveling and living in Paris. At one point, White raises an idea expressed by Foucault, the belief that "the most beautiful art we could practice would be the art of self-realization through friendship."

The Farewell Symphony is an ideal example of such a piece of art. The book centers on those friends, be they long-term or momentary, that mattered the most to White as he grew from an unknown writer in the 1960s to the literary influence that he became in the 1980s. However, White does not simply re-

Praise Bob!

Continued from page 15

seems to be aimed at yourself. Any comments?

Yes, I tried to be very honest about everyone and everything. My paramedic brother, who appears in the book, read it and told my mom, "He's as hard on himself as he is on us." It was very important for me to maintain the balance between mocking something and enjoying it at the same time.

If there was a sitcom called Bob on one of the major networks, do you think the network executives would have allowed you to come out like Ellen?

You're the third journalist to suggest to me that it's easier to be an out lesbian in mainstream media than it is to be an out gay man. I don't know if that is always true and I'm sure Ellen doesn't think that it's been easy. On the other hand I think that her coming out on the show is great. Artistically it made it better. I think that for any artist to deny their true nature is a dead-end journey.

You have been with your partner Tom for eight years. Is humor the secret to your success as a couple or is it something else?

Humor is a double-edged sword. I think sometimes it has helped us and at other times it has been a detriment. But Tom has a good sense of humor as well and a lot of what he says and does makes me laugh.

Many of the greatest comedians from Chaplin to Lucille Ball experienced pain, loneliness and disaster in their lives. Do you believe that great and long-lasting humor emerges from those darker places in the human heart and psyche?

I think so. I don't feel like I'm tortured or in pain but I did have a very chaotic, bizarre upbringing. I do feel that being an outsider forces one to become a better observer. The best stuff does touch on something painful and makes it funny, but not always. I was concerned with being honest. I wasn't interested in writing a confessional, self-helpy thing. Life and things around us are so much more complex.

You have a very, keen eye and Zen-like powers of observation. How did you develop these skills?

Thank you. I think that gay men and lesbians in general have to do this because it is an outsider's point of view. Most stand-up, great stand-up has come from women, blacks, Jewish people, lesbians and others on the outside. When these people have to live on the outside, or in the closet, they have to pretend to be somebody else and in many ways this forces one into observing one's own life from [outside].

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count adventures with one person after another. Instead, he presents a journey of selfrealization with special attention given to those who helped him grow and change as a person.

Of course, the narrator in this story is not White exactly. This book and the previous two of the trilogy, A Boy's Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty, are often called "autobiographical fiction." The conversations are not verbatim and the descriptions of past events are not exact. Writing such a "true" account would be impossible.

Still, White does lay his life open here. White and the "I" of these stories could certainly pass as twins, to say the least. When a British television commentator told White that he found his writing boring, White says in one published interview, “What could I say? 'It's based on my life, so that means you find my life and me boring. Sorry.'" In these "novels," readers discover how one man did live his life and survive in these places at these times.

White's account of what he did at this time has certainly earned much attention and raised a lot of controversy. Larry Kramer, in the Advocate, called White's newest book "an

about forgetting lines or being nude in front of an audience?

I have had my share of scary moments. Once I was in Seattle in a packed club with 250 people and by the end, half had walked out. Being naked on stage is nothing compared to that!

I read somewhere that you have taken up going to the gym regularly and even have a personal trainer. Why?

Writing this book, I had been sitting around typing all the time. I decided that I must feel fitter for the tour as well as for the TV show I am doing with CBC and Showtime. I don't think I'll appear shirtless on my next book cover, but you never know! (Laughs)

Straight comedians have used gayness as a source of ridicule and humor for years. Isn't it time gay comedians struck back with jibes at the straight world?

We do that! But that's easy. That's what everyone expects. What interests me are the weird commonalities between the two sides. A great example of that in the book is the section on couples counseling.

You obviously make people laugh all the time. What makes Bob Smith laugh?

Actually, I have tried to put stuff into my book and into my acts that makes me laugh as well. Hanging out with my friends makes me laugh, especially my other partners in crime in Funny Gay Males. Danny McWilliams and Jaffe Cohen are the two funniest people to hang out with. We are like twins, we have a seven-year history of jokes and a common language between us that is great!

What do the people say who have read about themselves in the book?

My two friends Michael and Richard in Santa Fe read it, and I was worried about Michael's reaction but he was fine with it. My sister had no problems. My mom was fine with it as well. She told me, "I give you your best material." Tom laughed at a lot of the stuff about himself, especially the part where I wrote that Tom's thousands of dollars of acting training was best used in saving 21⁄2 bucks bargaining at a flea market.

If your father had read the book, what would he have said?

He would have really liked it. He always supported me, and he had a great sense of humor.

What would you like to see in the crystal ball of your future?

Make enough money to buy a house. It doesn't have to be a mansion, just something I can call my home. I like things that last long relationships, long friendships, long-lasting interests and pursuits. I want to have the same friends and loved ones for forty, fifty years and seeing how things develop and change.

irresponsible piece of work."

Kramer criticized White for describing sex in trucks, outdoors, dark alleys, and in as many places and ways as possible. At one point, White estimates that he must have had sex with over three thousand men, a statistic

Edmund White

that Kramer disbelieves. White has responded that, well, it happened. For Kramer, White's newest book symbolizes the tragic flaw of gay male culture: an obsessive need to present our sex lives for all to see, be it in literature, film, or casual discussions among ourselves.

But is the book erotic? No, not really. The focus on physical interactions does not center on sexual gratification, but on how the situation has influenced the narrator, what he has learned and felt, and how this learning has affected his thinking about whatever is going on in his life. Sex is important not for what it has made him feel but for what it has taught him about intimacy, emotion, hon-

esty, and those other abstract ideas that shape human interaction.

Loss is one of these key ideas. AIDS of course enters the story when it moves into the 1980s, and many who matter to the narrator die. Does that make the book elegiac? Maybe, but I think more is going on here. The point of the book is not to mourn the past. At least, the point is not only to mourn. The larger purpose of this narrative is to compel us to honor the past, and we honor it when we remember it and when we acknowledge its connection to our present lives.

Another of the story's primary themes concentrates on White's development as a writer, how he moved from someone writing for himself and yearning for an audience to today's published author who is read internationally. In some ways, the book is about the act of writing as much as it is about how one man lived his life. More importantly, reading the book immerses the reader in luxurious, lengthy, prolonged sentences and thick descriptions. The book is not a quick read, and that is a good thing. Obviously, White enjoys writing and delights in grabbing the reader, bringing us into his work.

On September 24, the Thurber House brought White to Columbus and hosted a reading of The Farewell Symphony at the Columbus College of Art and Design's Canzani Center. To an audience made up predominantly of older heterosexual Thurber House series subscribers, White read of his life in Paris, his life with AIDS, and what he had lost. He spoke of Kramer's accusations and of gay male culture's youthful orientation and the invisibility of older gay men. When he speaks to such diverse audiences and writes for various publications, he reaches people and affects readers in so many waysways that the people he has written about have affected him.

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